State Sponsored Terrorism In Our Name

By Anna Daniels

There are 11,000 children currently in detention in 100 shelters in 17 states. This figure includes unaccompanied minors. Over 2,300 children, including babies and toddlers have been separated from their parents seeking asylum at the border between May 5 and June 9 alone. These children who arrived at the border with their family are being sent all across the country, ending up in places as diverse as Grand Rapids, Michigan and New York City. We know that some of these children are in El Cajon and Lemon Grove.

These children have been snatched from their family, sent to undisclosed locations and there is no plan to reunite them with their parents. This is state sponsored terrorism. It is an atrocity.

Our elected representatives on the Federal, State and local level, as well as the media have been unable to determine these locations or are granted limited access.

What we do know is that some of the parents have gone through expedited hearings and have already been deported back to the originating country without their child or children. Some parents, charged with a misdemeanor, have died in detention.

As for the separated children, some have already been placed in foster care. The trauma to these children is described over and over again in those accounts. Family members living in the US have been reluctant to come forward, fearing that they will be swept up by ICE.

The horrific treatment of children at some of these facilities is starting to leak to the media. Do you have the stomach to hear of boys, unaccompanied minors, being shackled together, having bags placed over their heads Abu-Ghraib style, and restrained in chairs because they are viewed as MS-13 members by their guards?

Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

These teens claim that they were beaten and tortured. How does that go down with your breakfast today?

Trump’s executive order does not address the issue of existing child separation so we must. There are encouraging signs that private corporations do not want to be accomplices. American, Southwest, Frontier and United Airlines are refusing to transport separated children. Greyhound on the other hand, has been a collaborator whose motto should be “Go Vichy“.

People inside some of these secret facilities are taking the risk to provide photographs and audio to journalists. These people find the courage to do what no Republican will.

Much like the Muslim Ban that immediately hit legal challenges, lawyers and the courts are the first line of defense for reuniting these children. “Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are among the high-profile donors to a Facebook fundraiser for the Texas-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, which had raised more than $9 million as of Wednesday” and there are more places to donate here.

Our local Indivisible chapters suggest other ways to help by donating to non-profits that will help fund their pro bono lawyers who are working to make sure asylum seekers get adequate care and are also doing the legal work for asylum requests. These families also badly need people to put money into their phone accounts so that they can stay in touch with their lawyers, support organizations and families.

Organization working with the detainees here on the ground & the organizers of the yearly Asylum Seeker caravan for the most vulnerable: http://www.pueblosinfronteras.org/

As a faith-based organization, the KBI strives to respond to the most critical needs by respecting the God-given dignity of the human person and by fostering bi-national solidarity through humanitarian assistance, education and research/advocacy.https://www.kinoborderinitiative.org/

Anna Daniels

I left a moribund Western Pennsylvania mill town the year that Richard M. Nixon was not impeached for crimes against the American people, and set off in search of truth, beauty, justice and a beat I could dance to. Here I am.

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About Anna Daniels

I left a moribund Western Pennsylvania mill town the year that Richard M. Nixon was not impeached for crimes against the American people, and set off in search of truth, beauty, justice and a beat I could dance to. Here I am.

I wonder what the die hard anti DACA folks think about all this. They are always screaming “send em all back!!!” No matter the circumstances. Whether the child is 15 or five months old. They are “illegals” and therefore criminals. These very same individuals (anti DACA) are more than happy about these forced separations. I wonder if they understand that means while the parents will be ultimately deported back to their native countries, the children will remain in the U.S. Do they get the irony or is that completely lost on them?

one great irony i notice over and again is that those right-wingers seem to not be able to grasp cause-and-effect situations. they seem to think (if they think at all) that there’s no connection between these actions on the government’s part and the consequences we see. then, it’s easy to blame those results on their political enemies.

Many of the ICE detention facilities have been outsourced to the for-profit prison industry. Among the top legislative recipients of money from the unconscionable evil for-profit was Democratic state senator Toni Atkins, the former Assembly speaker now Senate Pro Tem, who received a total of $10,200 from 2011 to 2016, per data from the California secretary of state’s office. This greedy, self-serving hypocrite gladly took the most money from CCA, GEO and their affiliates, the same evil companies that are charging immigrant detainees and their children $5.00 or more per phone call to talk to their families, attorneys, and just as much for an email to be sent or received from the detention centers run by the for-profit industry. She continues to help the for-profit industry from behind the scenes to help them remain in San Diego and even their expansion. These facilities continue to abuse and degrade transgender inmates even though she is LGBTQ herself. She is not our Senator Pro Tem, she is our Senator Pro SHAM!